Right Place, Wrong Time

by Judith Arnold

  “Everything’s fine,” she said, straining to keep her smile alive.

  His frown deepened.

  “It shows, huh?” she murmured, abandoning the effort to look happy.

  “It shows,” Ethan confirmed, tracing a fingertip along the curve of her lower lip. “Not in your smile but in your eyes.”

  She told herself the brush of his finger meant nothing. He was only pointing out how phony her smile had looked. That her mouth tingled in the wake of his caress was irrelevant. He and Kim had reconciled.

  Sort of, she amended, recalling the gaping distance between their pillows.

  Well, he wasn’t making a pass at her, anyway. He wouldn’t. He and Kim had their own mess to deal with, one nowhere near as disastrous as Ramona’s mess with Jack but one Gina wanted to steer as far from as possible. If Ethan could flirt with her when she’d clearly just finished a troubling phone call, he was a jerk. And she didn’t think he was a jerk, so she had to assume he wasn’t flirting. Just expressing concern—and warning her to overhaul her attitude before she confronted Alicia.

  She drew in a breath, and her smile this time was genuine, even though sadness washed through her. “Damn. I don’t want Alicia to know.”

  “Give yourself a minute.” He stepped out of the bathroom and waved her inside. As soon as she’d entered the narrow room, he closed the door behind her.

  She felt another tingle, not on her lips but deeper, in the place where affection and gratitude and a bunch of other emotions she didn’t care to examine lived inside her. If he’d been flirting, he wouldn’t have sacrificed his turn in the bathroom to offer her a moment of solitude. He was being a nice guy, that was all. Nicer than most of the guys she knew—but she didn’t want to think about that, either.

  She did need a minute to pull herself together. Squinting at her reflection in the mirror above the sink, she noticed what he’d seen: the anger and frustration shadowing her eyes and the tension tugging at her mouth. She splashed some cold water onto her face, washing away the lingering effect of his touch, and rehearsed a few smiles in the mirror, wishing one would look natural.

  Alicia’s toothbrush was propped in a glass at the edge of the sink, bright pink, with small, soft bristles. She was so young. She didn’t deserve to have an ass like Jack for her father. Maybe it was just as well that he was clearing out of the house. The less Alicia had to deal with him, the better.

  Gina didn’t really believe that, but the notion gave her comfort.

  After squaring her shoulders and inspecting her reflection one last time, she swung open the bathroom door. Ethan was leaning against the wall, watching for her, and when he saw her he straightened. “Better?” she asked.

  “Much.” He motioned with his head toward the kitchen. “Go buy her some stuff.”

  “That’s what God invented credit cards for,” she said, pleased that she was able to joke. “Hey, Ali!” she called out as she marched down the hall and through the living room. “Ali the Alley Cat? Did you enjoy talking to your mommy? Did you tell her we’re going shopping today?”

  “I want to buy her a shirt that changes colors, too,” Alicia announced as Gina joined her in the kitchen. “Can we buy her one?”

  “You bet,” Gina promised. “A shirt that changes colors is just what she needs.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “NO, THAT ONE’S not right for you,” Delia Hamilton told Alicia.

  Gina sighed. Alicia had already picked out a shirt for herself with a tropical bird that changed color in ultraviolet light, a shirt with a palm tree that changed color for her mother and a duck-billed cap with a grotesque iguana that changed from lemon yellow with orange highlights to lime green with brown highlights for Gina. But before Gina could pay for the selections and escape from the store, Alicia’s gaze had snagged on a display of nail enamels that also changed color in the sunlight. UV lamps around the store enabled Alicia to observe the color changes: a bottle of green polish turned mauve, a bottle of white turned taupe. Glittery gold turned coppery brown. That was the bottle Alicia had settled on.

  The choice had inspired Kim’s mother to intervene. Apparently, she viewed herself as an expert on color. “Your skin has golden undertones, sweetie,” she explained, wresting the bottle from Alicia’s fist and placing it back on the shelf. “You want to find a color that enhances your complexion, not one that clashes with it.”

  “But it doesn’t matter what color it is,” Alicia argued politely. “’Cause it changes color.”

  “Yes, but you want to find colors that will complement, not overstate. Do you know what complement means?”

  Alicia nodded. “Like, ’that’s a pretty dress.’”

  Delia smiled and, in spite of herself, so did Gina. She’d spent three hours in the woman’s presence so far, trailing her into liquor stores and jewelry stores and liquor-and-jewelry stores, listening to her expound on the nuances differentiating Stolichnaya from Absolut and the visual properties of natural versus lab-created emeralds. Along the way, she’d arranged to have a case of Absolut shipped to her home in Maryland and debated at length with Kim over the merits of two emerald tennis bracelets, both of which, the shop owner assured her, were made with only natural gems.

  Alicia had been a real trouper throughout Delia’s forays into the shops lining Charlotte Amalie’s Main Street and the alleys that branched off it. Gina’s chest was swollen with pride over her niece’s exemplary behavior. Most seven-year-olds wouldn’t have the stamina or the patience for the full-bore shopping style of the Hamiltons. But Alicia hadn’t whined or squirmed or tugged on Gina’s hand and whispered that she wanted to go to the beach, not once.

  It helped that there were so many interesting sights to take in: quaint stucco-and-brick buildings with towering arched doorways flanked by ancient shutters; shelves of tacky souvenirs—dolls and bongo drums, plastic mugs and paperweights shaped like Bluebeard’s Castle—looming above showcases of exquisite jewelry, elegant leather goods, perfumes and designer scarves. Friendly clerks at several of the stores offered everyone—even seven-year-old girls—sips of exotic liqueurs in shot-size paper cups. In one alley, a kiosk displayed steel drums, and Gina let Alicia bang on a few before they continued down the walk. A closet-size store embedded into a wall sold straw hats that smelled like a zoo, Alicia declared. Gina didn’t argue; zoos often had cages lined with straw.

  If the hectic scenery of the bazaar-like shopping district hadn’t been enough to keep Alicia in line, Kim’s mother would have. When she wasn’t occupied ordering booze or eyeballing bracelets, she doted on Alicia, regaling her with stories about the pirates who used to roam the alleys of the city three hundred years ago and the Danish merchants who traded with them. “It was kind of like money laundering,” she explained. Gina wasn’t sure Alicia knew what that meant, but she took it all in, wide-eyed and rapt.

  They’d eaten a lunch of sandwiches and lemonade in an open-air snack shop through which rare, warm breezes wafted. Once Alicia had slurped the last of her lemonade, she’d asked, “Can we go to the store with the shirts that change color in the sunlight?” Another child might have been cranky from the heat and traffic, all the walking and browsing on the crowded, narrow sidewalks of the city. But she didn’t seem the least bit worn-out.

  Before they left the snack shop, Gina had pulled Alicia’s hair off her neck into a scrunchy to keep her from getting overheated. The two narrow braids she’d had woven into the locks yesterday dangled playfully behind her, adorned with their turquoise beads. “I don’t know if the Hamiltons have other shopping to do,” she’d said, “but you and I can go to the store, okay?”

  “Oh, we’ll all go,” Delia Hamilton had insisted, looking as fresh as the cool lemonade frosting the surface of Gina’s tumbler. “I didn’t want to go there too early, because I just know you’re going to want to buy things there, and if you’d bought things there this morning, you’d have had to lug those shopping bags around all day. Trust me, Alicia—” she’d covered A
licia’s hand with her own and gave a little squeeze “—when it comes to shopping, strategizing is essential.”

  Gina supposed she would be defining strategizing along with money laundering for Alicia that evening. And complement, she added as Delia went on about which shades of nail polish most effectively brought out the subtle undertones of Alicia’s coloring.

  Kim had spent most of the day subdued. Gina wondered if she was stewing about her spat last night with Ethan, or maybe she resented that her mother was devoting the bulk of her attention to Alicia. The elegant blond woman who had been so appalled at the thought of sharing a condominium with Gina and Alicia seemed all but ready to adopt the kid.

  “She wants grandchildren,” Kim murmured, watching as Delia held various bottles of nail polish against Alicia’s cheek, sometimes sighing happily and sometimes shaking her head.

  “Ali’s already got a grandma,” Gina said, using the singular because she wasn’t sure whether Jack’s mother still counted as a grandmother now that her schmuck of a son had chosen to leave his wife and child and move in with the Other Woman.

  “Well, knowing my mother, she’s just trying out the grandmother role, giving it a dry run with your niece. If she likes it, she’ll set her sights on becoming a grandmother as soon as possible. If she doesn’t, she’ll back off. But Alicia is making the whole thing seem awfully pleasant.”

  Did she hope her mother would back off? Gina wondered. Or did she expect to make up with Ethan and get their engagement on track once more? “Alicia’s usually not so pleasant,” Gina said, though she didn’t mean it. In her eyes, Alicia was damn near perfect. “I don’t think anyone’s ever discussed nail polish colors with her in such detail before. It’s a whole fashion thing. Ali’s getting into it.” She shot Kim a measuring glance. Like her mother, Kim displayed no effects of the heat—no sweat, no droopy hair, no wilted clothing. She’d seemed more animated in the jewelry store, even though the discussion had focused on emeralds rather than diamonds, the subject she’d been reading up on yesterday. Clothing and nail polish that changed color obviously didn’t excite her.

  Or maybe she was stewing because her mother was having such a grand time testing out her grandma routine.

  “My sister was only twenty-three when she had Alicia. It’s hard, especially when you’re that young,” Gina said. “A lot of work. I want to have kids someday, but I’ve got to admit, being an aunt is much more fun.”

  “It’s too late for you to have kids that young,” Kim remarked, in a supercilious tone that insulted Gina. She was hardly an old maid. She wasn’t even “of a certain age” yet. In fact, she might well be younger than Kim. Not that it mattered; they weren’t in competition.

  “Okay,” Delia said, then released a grand, satisfied breath. “We’ve settled on these three bottles.”

  Three? Well, what the hell. Alicia’s father had walked out on her. The least she deserved was as many bottles of nail polish as she wanted.

  Gina carried all the items to the counter and handed the clerk her credit card. Next month when the bill arrived, she would probably go into cardiac arrest. But she’d pull through. Nail polish was practically a necessity, anyway. Before they left St. Thomas, she would give Alicia a manicure. And a pedicure. She wasn’t as fanatical about moisturizing her feet and keeping the skin smooth and supple as she’d been during her foot-modeling days, but she remembered how to give a good pedicure. She might need to buy a little bubble bath for soaking Alicia’s feet, but she had scissors, files, cuticle clippers and all the rest. Maybe this evening, after their ladies’ day, they could have a ladies’ night. Shopping and then spa. She’d smear facial cream on Ali’s cheeks and massage a leave-in conditioner into her hair, and they could gossip about all the girls in Alicia’s Brownie troop.

  “Now,” Delia said, her matronly authority reminding everyone that she was in charge. “Shall we go back and make a decision on the emerald tennis bracelet?”

  “I was thinking I might want a watch, instead,” Kim announced. “One of those Chopard watches. You know the ones with the happy diamonds floating under the crystal.”

  “I suppose we should look at them before making any decisions,” her mother agreed.

  The last thing Gina wanted to do was look at watches with happy diamonds floating inside them. “I’m thinking maybe Ali and I will head back to Palm Point,” she said. “We can grab a taxi—”

  “Oh, no, I wouldn’t think of it,” Delia silenced her. “We’re supposed to meet Ethan and Ross at five at that old restaurant—what’s it called?”

  “The Hotel 1829,” Kim answered.

  “Right. It’s just a few blocks from here. We’ll all have dinner together.”

  “But we can’t all fit in the car,” Gina pointed out. “Ali and I are going to have to take a taxi home, one way or another. So we may as well—”

  “Of course we can all fit. You can put Alicia on your lap. She’s small.”

  Gina would have declined, but Alicia piped up. “I wanna see the happy diamonds, Aunt Gina. Can we go see the happy diamonds?”

  Her father was scum. Of course she could see the happy diamonds.

  So off they went, back to this jewelry store and that, down an alley called Drake’s Passage and up an alley called Raadets Gade. Along the way, they stopped at a store filled with expensive tchochkes, where Delia and Kim debated the relative merits of various figurines and Gina held her breath the entire time they were in the store, fearful that Alicia might accidentally bump into a shelf and break a two-hundred-dollar porcelain rendering of a glum-faced clown. Who would want all these dust collectors in their homes, anyway? Obviously someone who didn’t live in a tiny studio apartment. She barely had room for her clothes and books in her home. Shelf space, like every other kind of space, was at a premium.

  Wasn’t it F. Scott Fitzgerald who’d said, “The rich—they’re different from you and me”? The rich, as far as Gina could tell, obsessed over whether Orrefors crystal was better than Lalique. Normal people, like her and Alicia, bought novelty T-shirts and hats with ugly iguanas on them. And nail polish in three colors—or six, depending on the available sunlight.

  After purchasing a set of crystal candlesticks—Baccarat, not Lalique or Orrefors—the Hamilton women led on to the watch store, where Alicia gawked at the bejeweled timepieces. “Can I get a watch?” she asked Gina.

  Her father might be scum, but Gina had her limits. Or, more precisely, her credit card did. “You’ve got a perfectly good watch.”

  “It’s got a plastic strap,” Alicia noted.

  “With the Power Puff Girls on it. It’s a fine watch.”

  “I guess,” Alicia said uncertainly.

  Gina wanted to give her lecture on the worth of things. But this store, with its display cases of Patek Phillipe, Rolex, Breitling and, yes, Chopard watches with floating diamonds beneath their crystals, didn’t seem like the right environment for such a speech. All she said was, “You can get the same information from a Power Puff Girls watch as from a happy-diamonds watch. Either one is going to tell you the time. You don’t get better time from a fancy diamond watch.”

  Alicia considered that, then conceded with a nod. “Is Mrs. Hamilton going to get a watch with happy diamonds?”

  “Kim might.” Thousands of dollars, she thought. Tens of thousands of dollars for a watch. How many hours of modeling mules and sandals would it take her to buy such an object? Thank goodness she didn’t want one.

  The rich were different. And it occurred to her, as Kim had the salesman remove several watches from the locked showcase so she could drape them around her wrist, that no matter how easy talking to Ethan was, no matter how comfortable she felt with him, no matter how much fun she’d had in his company last night, tossing back a beer and feeling the Caribbean night settle over them, he was one of the rich. Whatever the current status of his relationship with Kim, she was the woman he’d come to St. Thomas with, the woman who called him her fiancé. He was one of them.
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  ETHAN SHOULDN’T have been so glad to see Gina and Alicia waiting at the restaurant along with Kim and Delia Hamilton. He shouldn’t have felt a rush of elation at the thought of Gina having dinner with him. Actually, he shouldn’t have had the energy to feel much of anything.

  Ross Hamilton had put him through the wringer on the golf course that day. The sun had beaten down on them, relentlessly hot and glaring, but Ross had insisted that they walk the links rather than rent a cart. “Exercise,” he’d said, puffing from hole to hole like a recently retired colonel trying to whip a recruit into shape. “That’s the beauty of this sport. If you do it right, you learn patience, you develop skill and you tone up the cardiovascular system.”

  “I belong to a health club in Arlington,” Ethan had muttered, tramping along behind Ross, the weight of his rented bag of clubs pressing down onto his shoulder. “I tone up my cardiovascular system on a treadmill.” In air-conditioning, he wanted to add. With a TV set tuned to CNN right in front of him.

  “After you and Kim settle down, you’ll need to join a golf club,” Ross had informed him, then teed up, swung his driver and sent his ball soaring. “I’ll arrange to have you join my club. I know it sounds impractical, given that you live in Connecticut and the club is in Maryland. But I’m sure you and Kim will be coming down to visit whenever you get the chance, and you’ll want access to the club then. Besides—” he watched critically as Ethan lined up to drive his ball, and pursed his lips in disdain when Ethan’s ball failed to reach the fairway “—it’s a very selective club. They don’t accept just anyone. If I sponsor you, of course, you’re in. And that will ensure our family’s legacy at the club for generations to come.”

  Ethan had gritted his teeth and mopped the sweat off the back of his neck with a handkerchief. If anything could be more disagreeable than playing golf that afternoon with Ross, on a day when the brilliant turquoise of the Caribbean Sea was visible beyond the rolling lawns of the course they were playing and he couldn’t stop thinking about how much he’d rather be swimming, snorkeling or boating, it was the notion of joining Ross’s golf club in Maryland and having to play more golf with him.